The Origins of Cyberspace
Christie's is holding an auction called The Origins of Cyberspace in New York on Wednesday Feb 23, 2005. The auction is of material put together by collector extraordinaire Jeremy Norman. Here's Jeremy Norman's History of Science site, and the Feb 17 NY Times article discussing the auction.
The auction is interesting for several reasons. First, will the estimates be met or even exceeded? To some degree these are rather large sums for papers that only a fairly short while ago would not have been worth anything. Case in point: Lot 340 with an estimate of $3000 - $4000, described as 'ECKERT-MAUCHLY COMPUTER CORPORATION. "Employment agreement." ' (Googlers, should you keep those employment agreements in a safe place?)
The auction is structured so that it is first offered as a single lot for $1.3 Million. If nobody purchases the entire Origins of Cyberspace collection for the $1.3 Million, then the individual lots will be auctioned. Norman has a reputation as a dealer and collector of being shrewd about purchasing items for much less than he sells them for (this is a good reputation to have as a dealer, otherwise you can't stay in business), so undoubtedly his cost basis in the collection is a fraction of the $1.3 Million.
Mr. Norman has pulled off quite a brilliant coup. His collection consists of over 1,000 books, papers, and so on, and at least attempts to intellectually describe one of the most important development in human scientific history. Perhaps this could also be done in relationship to genetic research, DNA, and so on, but it is hard to imagine many other fields in which the conceptual importance would be understood so quickly. (And in which it would be possible to put together this kind of broad conceptual collection of epigraphic material rather than the real thing. Query: What is the real thing? Hardware? Software? Computer programs? Will source code ever become a collectible?)
As an arena of collecting, the origins of computers, or as Norman likes to call it, cyberspace, falls somewhere between my collecting interest in pre-digital era mechanisms, and people who collect "old" computers. (Old computers means things like Altairs, and anything that is "over ten years old, and not Windows.") "Between" chronologically, not as an expression of value, because old computers that post-date the Norman era are not particularly valuable yet.
Here's an item by reporter Evan Koblentz from news.computercollector.com about Jeremy Norman and pricing the items in this auction.
Anyhow, things are getting interesting in this collecting niche. I'll be watching the auction results with attention.
Posted by Harold Davis at February 21, 2005 09:42 AM
